Public Hearing Block 9

The Commission heard that social cohesion is not achieved by asking communities to tolerate one another from a distance. It requires people to feel that they belong, that their identity is recognised and that their safety is connected to the safety of others. David Gonski, Chair of the Prime Minister’s antisemitism education taskforce, told the Commission that Australians genuinely value social cohesion and that diversity should be understood as a strength rather than a burden. He said Jewish identity and festivals should be embraced as part of everyday Australian life. Gonski said the Australian Curriculum should move beyond Holocaust education to include Jewish history, faith and the contribution of Jewish Australians to the country.

He said, “The Holocaust must never be forgotten, but it is only one part of Jewish history.” He added that Jewish life should not be introduced to students only through the lens of persecution, but also through contribution, tradition, identity and belonging.

Former Tasmanian Premier Peter Gutwein, now Chair of the Australian Multicultural Council, told the Commission that anti-migration voices had been allowed to dominate public debate. He said political, business and community leaders needed to help build a more positive national narrative around migration and multicultural Australia and made clear the responsibility for social cohesion should not fall only on migrant communities. He argued that business groups and industry bodies also had a responsibility to speak because they benefit directly from migrant labour and skills.

Sydwest Multicultural Services Chief Executive Elfa Moraitakis told the Commission Western Sydney communities felt "used as scapegoats" following the Bondi attack, and that "if one community hurts, really the whole of Australian society hurts." She said genuine progress on belonging happens in workplaces, schools and playgrounds, and cautioned against social cohesion work that only reaches "the already converted." 

Port Phillip Mayor Alex Makin gave evidence that members of the local Jewish community had described concealing items that identify their faith out of rising anxiety about safety – he said those concerns extended even to primary school children. This theme has recurred across the Commission’s public hearing blocks. 

Schools, the Commission heard, need to do more than respond after antisemitic or racist incidents occur. Prevention requires students and teachers to have the knowledge, confidence and support to understand difference before prejudice takes hold.

Herbert Um, Chief Executive of Faith Values, described a religions and worldviews education pilot being expanded into Victorian government and Catholic schools. The program covers Judaism, Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Sikhism, humanism and rationalism through shared questions about values, citizenship and the purpose of life. Um said teachers were often nervous about teaching religion, but avoiding the subject created its own risks. Without reliable information about unfamiliar faiths and worldviews, students may turn instead to social media and other unreliable sources - an environment where stereotypes, conspiracy narratives and prejudice can quickly take hold.

Rabbi Zalman Kastel, Founder and Dean of Together for Humanity, and Dr Beau Hu-Jia, the organisation’s national school partnerships manager, argued for sustained, whole-of-school approaches to racism and antisemitism. Dr Hu-Jia said schools should report antisemitism, Islamophobia and other forms of racism as distinct categories. Specific data would allow schools to identify patterns, understand what is happening and judge whether prevention programs are effective. He also called for professional learning for education leaders and a national framework linking student wellbeing to social cohesion.

The Commission heard evidence about a school that had experienced serious antisemitic and racist incidents before it adopted a sustained partnership with Together for Humanity. In the first several months of 2026, the school reported no incidents of antisemitism or racism. The change was attributed to a whole-of-school approach involving leadership, teachers and students, with older students trained to facilitate learning for younger students.

Kevin Nafte, who played and later coached an Israeli-Palestinian Australian rules football team, described choosing an early learning centre for its teaching approach and staff diversity, only later discovering that it offered a Jewish curriculum open to all children; more than half of its students were not Jewish.

Medical doctor and Chief Executive of Rama Health Dr Naba Masad Alfayadh described the Kookaburra Kindness Box, a lower-primary resource built around her children’s book, Kookaburra Kindness, that helps children understand the Bondi attack in a developmentally appropriate way. The Kookaburra Kindness Box was co-created by Dr Alfayadh and a trauma-informed education specialist and Jewish mother who provided evidence under the pseudonym ‘Sarah’. Sarah described the original book as “perfect” and told the Commission how both the original book and subsequent classroom resource refers to the Chanukah symbols of a small candle shining against darkness, and its message of bringing light. 

Across the hearing block, the Commission heard a consistent message: education should help students understand the many communities that have shaped Australia, approach unfamiliar faiths and cultures with curiosity, and navigate difficult issues without resorting to stereotypes or collective blame.

The Commission heard that universities and other institutions are increasingly avoiding difficult subjects, often because educators fear complaints, social media backlash, teaching reviews or professional consequences.

Daniel Heller and Farid Zaid, Monash University academics and co-directors of the Brave Conversations Project, told the Commission that this fear can lead to self-censorship, silence or a retreat from contested issues. Heller, who teaches Israeli and Palestinian history, acknowledged that while no academic can teach entirely free of bias, educators can be transparent about the limits of their knowledge and the different ways communities interpret historical events. His university course is taught by a team including Israeli, Palestinian, Iranian, Egyptian and Australian academics, allowing students to encounter different perspectives within the classroom.

Zaid noted that students are increasingly struggling to distinguish discomfort, which can be part of the learning process, from distress. He warned that efforts to protect students by removing all difficult content can have the opposite effect, and explained that when universities avoid contested subjects, students may turn to online “conflict entrepreneurs” who deliberately exploit emotion, certainty and division. 

The Commission also heard from Kate Rosenberg, Executive Director of the New Israel Fund Australia, who argued that cross-community engagement must not be limited to safe areas of common ground. Rosenberg said social cohesion programs often fall into the habit of avoiding the issues that actually divide people, often settling for surface level similarities like music or food. She suggested instead for difficult but structured conversations about Israel and Palestine, Zionism and what connection to Israel means to different Jewish people. Rosenberg pointed to the British education program Solutions Not Sides, which brings Jewish Israeli and Palestinian speakers into classrooms before moving into civic responsibility, media literacy and critical thinking. Rosenberg also referred to Givat Haviva and bilingual Hebrew-Arabic schools as models Australia could learn from.

The evidence was not an argument for institutions to permit hostility in the name of debate. Rather, a note on how schools and universities need the confidence, training and guidance to distinguish a difficult conversation from racism, antisemitism and intimidation.

Peter Ivany, a Director and Board Member across institutions including the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Art Gallery of New South Wales and NIDA, told the Commission in the second week that the arts sector experienced a "profound and deeply unsettling shift" after October 7, with a minority of institutions "captured by people whose ideology runs the institution." He said good leadership begins at board level with diverse skill sets and perspectives, and that organisations must respond to antisemitism with speed and zero tolerance, "because otherwise it's then accepted behaviour." He recommended that government arts funding be made conditional on organisations not undermining social cohesion, and that due diligence be conducted on senior appointments to publicly funded institutions.

The Commission considered whether antisemitism should be addressed through broad anti-racism systems, specific measures for Jewish Australians or both.

Giridharan Sivaraman, Race Discrimination Commissioner, defended the National Anti-Racism Framework as a foundation for systemic change across education, workplaces, media, health, law and data. He rejected the suggestion that the framework’s limited references to antisemitism meant it had nothing specific to offer Jewish Australians. Sivaraman said the framework should be adapted to the experiences and needs of particular communities. He accepted that antisemitism required urgent attention and agreed that antisemitism-specific content should be co-designed with Jewish representative bodies. The National Anti-Racism Framework, he said, should sit alongside - not replace - the Royal Commission’s recommendations.

Department of Home Affairs Secretary Stephanie Foster confirmed that the National Anti-Racism Framework, published in November 2024, confirmed that the National Anti-Racism Framework, published in November 2024, does not contain recommendations directed specifically at antisemitism. The Government has not yet responded to it. Foster nonetheless said she remained “on the record” that targeted action against antisemitism was critical.

Foster described the Office of Social Cohesion, established in September 2024 with about 25 staff and a $7 million budget, and a secretaries’ steering group involving 11 Commonwealth departments and agencies. She also said a “positive social cohesion clause” had been placed in more than 1,100 multicultural grant agreements since September 2025. The clause defines inciting conduct to include prejudicial comments made on social media, and work is underway to consider extending it across other Commonwealth departments.

Foster acknowledged a “valid concern amongst the Jewish community” that people who had engaged in public antisemitic conduct had passed visa screening, sometimes being removed only after their conduct became publicly known.

The Commission heard governments need data, genuine consultation and the knowledge of communities closest to emerging harm.

Devavrath Parasuram, Co-Founder of Hindus Down Under, said the Hindu community held extensive qualitative evidence of racial abuse, but that it was scattered and difficult for Government to interpret. A hate-reporting tool developed through a cross-community consultation is expected to launch shortly. He said centralised data would allow governments to identify patterns, understand scale and respond more effectively.

The Australian Cohesion Forum’s Managing Director, Roz Mendelle, and Co-Director and Jewish community liaison, Simonne Whine, also gave evidence about the organisation’s Living Archive, which records survivor testimony from Cambodian, Rwandan, South Sudanese, Taiwanese and Iranian communities.

Whine said lived experience could generate empathy in ways institutional language could not. Mendelle said communities that had lived through persecution, displacement and conflict often identify warning signs before institutions do. Iranian dissidents, she noted, had warned about the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps before a synagogue was firebombed. A Rwandan genocide survivor had described comparable warning signs before the genocide. The message was that survivor communities should not be treated solely as witnesses to past trauma - they can also offer knowledge vital to prevention, early warning and public policy.

Settlement Services International Chief Executive Violet Roumelioti made a similar point. Government programs, she said, were too often designed in isolation, without meaningful consultation. She proposed locally led listening roundtables involving diaspora, faith and community groups as an ongoing process rather than a one-off exercise.

“Social cohesion cannot be built through crisis response alone,” she said. “We became complacent.”

The Commission also examined a dehumanisation framework developed by the Australian Muslim Advocacy Network. Legal adviser Rita Jabri Markwell said the framework identified 12 forms of dehumanising speech and conduct, including comparing groups to animals or vermin, portraying a group as a uniform threat, attributing collective guilt and denying atrocities.

The framework was intended to protect criticism of governments, militaries and political ideologies while prohibiting dehumanising speech directed at people because of protected characteristics. But cross examination by Nicholas Bender SC, appearing for seven peak Jewish communal bodies, tested whether that boundary could always be maintained. Markwell accepted that the framework could permit dehumanising language directed at political ideologies and their adherents, including Zionists.

The role that councils play in maintaining social cohesion emerged as a major theme of the second week. Witnesses told the Commission that local government is often the first and most trusted point of contact when communities are frightened or hurting, but that the role is not yet formally recognised or sufficiently resourced.

Port Phillip Mayor Alex Makin described rising anxiety among Jewish residents following the Adass Israel Synagogue firebombing and the Bondi attack. The council appointed a dedicated liaison officer, held a vigil the day after the firebombing and helped secure a Victoria-wide statement of solidarity signed by 85 per cent of the state’s 79 councils within three days. Port Phillip has also incorporated the Victorian Government’s social-cohesion value statement into approximately $250,000 in grant and funding programs. Organisations that do not commit to inclusion can be required to complete cultural training or lose funding.

Makin called for nationally consistent data linking local government, police and community reporting, as well as direct Commonwealth funding. Australia, he said, too often “recreates the model” after every crisis rather than building durable systems.

Melbourne Lord Mayor Nicholas Reece said the City of Melbourne had removed nearly 4,000 square metres of antisemitic graffiti, posters and stickers over about two years under a zero-tolerance policy with a one-hour removal target. The council is working with the M9 group of inner-city mayors to extend the standard, although cost remains a barrier.

Reece questioned why an Israeli restaurant had been targeted by a mob when restaurants connected to other countries involved in geopolitical conflict had not faced the same treatment. He also argued that the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade should formally hear community views on international conflicts, rather than leaving council chambers and town halls to become the default venue for debates they are not equipped to adjudicate.

Waverley Mayor Will Nemesh, whose council represents the largest Jewish population in NSW, proposed an explicit social-cohesion function for councils under the Local Government Act. Waverley adopted Australia’s first council antisemitism strategy in March 2025; it has since been released as a model template and taken up by other councils.

Nemesh also coordinated a statement condemning racism and antisemitism signed by more than 20 of Sydney’s 33 metropolitan mayors. The evidence presented local government, in Makin’s words, as “the nexus between government policy and the outreach into community”.

Sport can build trust across communities more effectively than many formal programs, the Commission heard. But sporting codes often lack the policies, data and reporting systems needed to identify and respond to antisemitism when it occurs. 

Kevin Nafte described playing and later coaching an Israeli-Palestinian Australian rules football team assembled by the Peres Centre for Peace, in which physical contact on the field built trust that a formal dialogue program alone could not. "Sports is like a universal language," he said, while cautioning that grassroots trust could not substitute for sustained political progress. He noted that the team's Palestinian captain was later ostracised by his community and forced to divorce his wife after being accused of normalising relations with Israelis.

Nicola Skinner, the NRL's General Manager of Participation, Community and Business Operations, detailed the In League in Harmony program, run with the Institute for Economics and Peace, which has reached 13,000 participants across 61 Harmony Gala Days since 2014 and returns a calculated $5.30 in value for every dollar invested. She acknowledged, however, that antisemitism is not called out as a specific characteristic under the game's member protection policy, and that a recent survey of about 2,000 volunteers found "responding to difficult situations" was their area of lowest confidence.

General manager of Maccabi Australia, David Goldman, presented survey data from the organisation's national membership base showing that 47.7% of respondents had witnessed or experienced antisemitism in a sporting setting, but that only 30% had reported it – evidence, he said, of "a massive underrepresentation and underreporting." Goldman said many codes lacked fit-for-purpose discrimination policies, leaving match officials as young as 14 without clear guidance. He called for mandatory antisemitism education, standardised disciplinary frameworks and a centralised, app-based reporting mechanism.

Netball Australia Chief Executive Mark Falvo agreed nationally consistent guidelines were needed rather than allowing policy to evolve club by club, noting the code's current policies contain no standalone reference to antisemitism. A witness giving evidence under the pseudonym Witness ‘AEB’ described Connection Camp, a Triguboff-funded initiative mixing 120 Jewish, Muslim and Christian children on shared sporting teams, with 22 of 24 surveyed parents rating the experience very good or excellent. ‘AEB’ said this evidence should be embedded within the school curriculum rather than left as a self-selecting activity for families already open to it.

Some of the strongest evidence in the second week came from people describing relationships formed after the Bondi attack - not by government direction, but by volunteers, congregations and neighbours choosing to turn up for one another.

Tony Jackson, president of the Southbank Elsternwick Rotary Club, described building a listening-based social cohesion program after the Bondi attack left him feeling that "middle Australia hadn't listened." The pilot program trained about 45 community leaders, and around 10 Rotary district presidents are now interested in rolling it out across Victoria. Lisa Button, Chief Executive of Community Refugee Sponsorship Australia, and two witnesses from a Sydney volunteer group described the Community Refugee Integration and Settlement Program, through which a mostly Jewish group of volunteers welcomed a Somali Muslim mother and daughter to Sydney weeks after the Bondi attack. One volunteer, Jessica, described a trip to a Lakemba mosque to arrange support for the family as the most powerful part of the experience, as it opened a conversation with a Muslim religious leader about how each of their communities was faring.

Rabbi George Mordecai described co-founding the intercultural dialogue group Coming Together after October 7, bringing Jewish, Arab, Palestinian and Muslim Australians into sustained conversation. "We will really only be able to fight racism and hatred together, and not in siloed communities," he told the Commission. Amar Preet Singh, founder of Turbans for Australia, described the Sikh charity's food relief operation near the Bondi memorial in the days after the attack, and Bondi paddle-out organiser David Solsky described the December 2025 event — in which up to 3,500 people gathered on the beach — and a new national initiative called Ripples intended to give communities across Australia a shared, apolitical annual tradition of remembrance.

The Commission also heard evidence about the Chabad of Bondi's Project Noah, created by the late Rabbi Eli Schlanger who was among those killed in the Bondi attack, which invites Australians of all backgrounds into the synagogue to bake challah, tour the building and put questions directly to a Rabbi. A related One Mitzvah for Bondi campaign generated an estimated movement of small acts of kindness across the country and led to the creation of Mitzvah House, a community drop-in space at Bondi Beach. Each of these initiatives echoed the Commission's first-week finding that belonging is built through sustained relationships rather than one-off gestures, and suggested that, eight months on from the Bondi attack, that work is now underway.

The second week of hearings also looked at what it will take to make social cohesion part of everyday decision making, not something governments and institutions turn to only after a crisis. Evidence focused on the funding, procurement and accountability measures that could help embed this work for the long term.

Glenys Beauchamp, a former federal department secretary appearing for Independent Advocates for Community Sport, proposed tying government procurement to demonstrated social cohesion contributions, modelled on the United Kingdom's Social Value Act and Manchester City Council's 30% social and environmental weighting on contracts.

Violet Roumeliotis and Yamamah Agha of Settlement Services International proposed a national community safety fund, allocated by risk rather than restricted to a small number of groups. Roumeliotis and Agha suggested that this fund should cover physical and digital security upgrades, emergency preparedness training and crisis communications for communities facing credible threats, alongside a companion community participation fund for everyday spaces such as sporting clubs, schools and libraries.

Department of Home Affairs secretary Stephanie Foster confirmed the department's social cohesion grant clause, now embedded in more than 1,100 agreements, and said there was "very strong support from secretaries" on an 11-member cross-government steering group to extend similar conditions more broadly, while stressing the need to consult colleagues responsible for individual grant programs first. Peter Ivany separately recommended that arts funding be made conditional on organisations not undermining social cohesion, and that background checks be applied to senior appointments at publicly funded institutions with the same rigour as any other job.

Taken together, the evidence made a simple point. Strategies, frameworks and pilots will only make a lasting difference if funding, procurement and accountability arrangements make them real.